No-poaching clause means travel nurses can't accept jobs in N.L.

The Registered Nurses' Union Newfoundland and Labrador says it's appalled that the provincial government included a clause in private-agency nursing contracts preventing some nurses from staying and working in the province's public health-care system. 

Union president Yvette Coffey said she became aware of the issue when a nurse who was employed by a private agency inquired about taking a permanent, full-time position in the public system.

"He was not allowed to take a position in Newfoundland and Labrador for upwards of 12 months after he finished his contract with the private agency," Coffey said.

After some investigation, the union discovered that were are four or five agency contracts that all have limitations between six and 12 months denying a nurse the ability to take a job in Newfoundland and Labrador's public health-care system.

One private agency's contract requires a nurse to be disconnected from a private agency for more than a year before they can work in Newfoundland and Labrador. If breached, the province pays a hefty fine. 

"If one of those nurses comes and takes a job in their public health-care system, we — as a government — have to pay between $5,000 or a or full year's salary [to the private company]," Coffey said.

Coffey said there is no logical rationale for restrictions that she said "handcuffs" the province from hiring nurses and nurse practitioners.  

"It's appalling," she said. 

When COVID-19 was raging, Coffey said she was involved in discussions with the province to bring more travel nurses here. 

"I was told at that meeting that there was a clause in the contract that would prevent the agency from poaching our nurses out of the public sector, and also from poaching our graduates, our new nursing graduates, for up to a year. Nobody told me that it was also reciprocal with the company, and that we could not hire their agency nurses into our publicly funded health-care system."

Coffey noted that the province is working to recruit nurses from India, Ireland and the Philippines but has restricted itself from hiring the people who are already here and ready to work.  

Protecting the work force

Debbie Molloy, vice-president of N.L. Health Services, said when the contracts with private nursing agencies were signed at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the health authority's hands were tied. 

"We do have contracts with a number of different agencies and they have what's called a non solicitation clause," she said. 

"It actually protects us because agencies cannot hire either nurses who work with us within the province, or we actually extended that to also be students who are graduating."

Molloy said the clause is meant to ensure that N.L. Health Services maintains a healthy workforce and public sector workers are not recruited by private agencies. 

Health Minister Tom Osborne said the contracts were drawn up and agreed upon between the health authority and private agencies. He said the health authority did the right thing by including the non-solicitation clause. 

"If there wasn't some level of protection, we could potentially lose far more nurses to other provinces than we would gain," he said. 

"If there wasn't a protection built into the contract to ensure that agencies did not recruit our nurses to work as agency nurses in their same position, in the same hospital, for the same community — they would drain our workforce."

Osborne said the number of nurses bound by the clause is low. 

"We will be doing what we can to try and work with the agency to have them released, but that remains to be seen," he said. 

According to Molloy, as of March 18 there were 357 private agency nurses working in Newfoundland and Labrador, down from 373 in February, and fewer than 20 of them are working in the metro St. John's area. 

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